There’s nothing like a smart mystery to get our minds going. We want to see if we can figure out whodunit before the answers are revealed. Yet paradoxically our secret hope is that we won’t guess, but will be so cleverly surprised that our jaws will drop instead. Glass Onion is one of these well-crafted mystery films where you get the best of both. The script is so twisty and surprising that it’s almost not worth trying to put together the clues yourself (yet most of them are there for the keenly observant). The movie is so well put together that it’s hard not to get swept up in what happens next. When Detective Benoit Blanc (played again by Daniel Craig) starts to unravel the plot, it’s even more fun to follow along for the ride. But let me warn you that there are some unexpected turns. 

In the first Knives Out movie, most of that “oh yeah” head-nodding came only at the end when the answers were all revealed, but this time Blanc is more mixed up in the events as they happen and he starts out being the most ignorant one of the group. Blanc is one of the group of characters invited to a billionaire’s private Greek island for a weekend (in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic – though I have no idea why they made that a plot point. Were they filming this during the Pandemic, and figuring that it’s something that audiences would nitpick if the film were set in a 2020 without masks or social distancing? If so, why did they just use another plot contrivance – a made-up, magical, instantaneous, oral vaccine – to allow all the characters to interact in close quarters? But I digress …). The group of eclectic characters all go way back (all friends before they were successful) and enjoy annual reunions hosted by billionaire Miles Bron (played by Edward Norton). This time Bron organizes a murder mystery party, with himself as the faux victim, for his friends to solve the crime. Of course, each of the “old friends” have a bit of a complicated relationship and some bones to pick with Bron, so things may not go exactly as he’d planned. I’ll bet you think you know what’s going to happen, right? I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you. Early on we find out that Blanc was not actually invited by Bron to the island – and so the twists begin…

One of the best parts of these Agatha-Christie-style mysteries is the blend of characters. Kate Hudson plays a model-turned-fast-fashion-mogul, Dave Bautista plays a Twitch gamer celebrity, Kathryn Hahn plays a politician, Leslie Odom Jr. plays a cutting-edge scientist, and Janelle Monae the disgruntled former business partner of Norton’s tech billionaire, Bron.The cast make a wonderful mix and half the fun is just watching them chew the scenery in this island paradise. All the actors give wonderful performances, bringing believable life to their somewhat over-the-top characters. All the better to misdirect the audience’s attention, no? The cast of characters all play against the backdrop of a fabulous villa, topped with an actual giant glass onion, and filled with various tongue-in-cheek elements of billionaire excess including a home gym that contains a larger-than-life video screen with a live connection to the actual Serena Williams on standby for whenever anyone wants to do a workout, and two more words: Mona Lisa. Topping that off, Daniel Craig is once again delightful as the hardcore-Southern Benoit Blanc. He masterfully makes you forget that other whatshisname that he played. Blanc starts out charmingly naive (as he’s the new addition to the group) and feigns ignorance while gathering clues (the clues that we, the audience, are most likely missing because we’ve been distracted by the other characters strutting like peacocks), but by the time he starts to reveal what he deduced, we are all captivated.

I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll leave things sounding like this is still a “point-A to point-B to point-C” mystery, but trust me that it isn’t. Things that you see happen are not what you think you see happen. It’s amazing how well-crafted writer-director Rian Johnson has made this story (now why couldn’t he have done as much for Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi, darnit!). The only tiny flaw is that I had wished for a more clever ending than the big-budget ending that we got. Nevertheless, I watched this movie when some under-the-weather action was putting me out of mood to watch pretty much anything and I still loved it. It’s the perfect film to take your mind off things for a while. Relax and get swept away by a fun story, but if you get caught up with trying to figure things out, don’t say I didn’t warn you. (4.5 out of 5)